On The Presumption Of Knowing How To Read By John Guilliory

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Essay One
In the essay, “On the Presumption of Knowing How to Read”, by John Guilliory, He emphasizes the lack of articulation on reading in college. Guillory states “Upward of forty percent of college freshmen are directed to remedial classes of some kind in their first year” (qtd by Guillory 8). He claims that freshmen in college are put in remedial class for writing because the lack of understanding of what they are reading. He also states that many students that are not in remedial classes may also lack the interpretive skill. He has seen many students just be able to paraphrase and give an unobjectionable comprehension of the reading. Guillory states that not being able to move beyond simple understanding seems as if there is a resistance to reading. Guillory suggests that we need to learn the conceptual break in reading.
Guillory explains it as “The Conceptual Break means that interpretation asserts the possibility of multiple frames of reference, with no one final correct interpretation” (Guillory 9). He claims that a person loses the ability to interpret what they read. When reading he believes the reader needs to be able to interpret the words in a new frame. He states that a reader is taught to explorer their feelings from the reading and fails to see the interpretation of the story. Guillory believes that if a student does not grasp the conceptual break, they will not succeed in college. He claims that teaching reading needs to continue and that the job is never done.
As I read this article by John Guillory, I thought he sounded like a pompous, condescending know it all, but when I read the article again it made me begin to think about reading skills. In elementary school, we read books about faraway lands of make b...

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...ceptual break, we might be able to go right into college trained in reading in different frames. Teachers in high school look for one point of view when it comes to the reading they choose. In high school if we did not like the reading and put that in our papers the teacher would take of points. We were not allowed to be free thinkers and our opinions did not matter to the teachers. When I wrote a paper in high school, I would just skim the story and write what the teacher was looking for. I did this because why should I take my time and read a paper when it did not matter what I thought of it. In high school, if we could read the story and use the conceptual break to be able to interpret in our own way, there might not be so many complaints of lack of articulation in college. High school teachers need to be more open to critical thinking and writing as college is.

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